Small Group Tours

Small Group Tours

Special interest tours for fibre and textile enthusiasts, connoisseurs of the Tuscan cigar and the excellent food and wine of Tuscany. You learn with Italian farmers and artisans who open their workshops and homes specially for you. They’re eager to exchange views and enrich their knowledge and yours. You discover a heritage hidden behind unmarked doors whose meaning requires explanation. As I explore and understand better, I’m continually surprised, enchanted and sometimes dismayed. This is the world I want to help you appreciate and carry home with you to enrich your own life. (Maximum 10 people; no large coaches, no guides waving umbrellas)

This small-group tour takes you to visit the last of what was once a thriving tradition in the region around Lucca, in northwestern Tuscany, producing textiles ranging from rich silks for the church and aristocracy to the hand-spun hemp of farming families.

This small-group tour is a variation on our popular textile tour in May. To the traditional spinning, weaving and cuisine in the region around Lucca, in northwestern Tuscany, we’ve added felting, basket weaving with marsh reeds, the vanishing art of making watermarked paper and a workshop with a young man who has discovered the magic of using his wine as a mordant for dyeing leather and fabric.

Come to Tuscany for 10 days of total enjoyment of the Toscano cigar and other gourmet vices. As we follow the natural history of the cigar from the tobacco harvest at Sansepolcro to the cigar factory of Lucca, you indulge in Chianina steak, white truffles, excellent wines, craft beers, grappa, and cigars.

A collaboration with Viaggi Senza Fretta

An extraordinary opportunity to visit the homes of locals and workshops of artisans, sharing their culinary treasures from Val d’Orcia in the south of Tuscany to Lucca in the north. Make new friends in an intimate group of like-minded people (only 8–10 guests).